the smell

    I walked out of our apartment to find Connor with the thing in his hand, getting ready to cut into it underneath some poor, unsuspecting person’s window.

I yelled at him: what are you doing? Get that away from the window! People are going to smell it.

I made him follow me onto the lawn, as I carefully balanced my Captain America glass of water in one hand and tried not to put my sprained foot into one of those holes that just show up in the grass sometimes. It was twilight and getting darker by the second.

He asked: you want me to come all the way out here?

I responded: you don’t know anything.

This was the culmination of a three hour fight about durian. He’d just gotten back from his parents house on the coast, and he’d spent the eight hour drive next to a cooler full of the smelliest fruit that I think exists in the world.

He was so cute when he told me about it, like it was a surprise I would enjoy. I immediately yelled at him for bringing it near our home. I told him that I’ve watched enough Chopped to know that this one’s a doozy.

We both got defensive pretty fast. He was just trying to do something nice. I’d taken his vacation as an opportunity to deep clean several of the dirtiest parts of the apartment so they’d stay nice while he was gone. He tried to put the thing in our fridge. I’d yelled until he put it by the mailboxes, which are basically right outside our door.

We tried to compromise once in the kitchen. I made him wait until I turned on the vent and cracked a window. He opened the cooler and the kitchen filled with the stench of rotten milk and fetid garbage. He told me his brother ate half of one, and I said I didn't care. I was not putting that smell in my mouth. He’d made the mistake earlier of telling me it tasted like it smelled.

At 9 o’clock I was exhausted and tired of fighting. I was trying to listen to Connor the way my parents can never listen to each other. I also desperately wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to cut the thing up in our apartment after I’d fallen asleep. (I woke up once at 3 in the morning to the smell of our rotting kitchen garbage and blamed Connor for my lost sleep because he hadn’t taken out the trash like he said he would.)

I told him I would try a piece but he would have to cut it up outside and then immediately throw it in the dumpster. I found our worst knife and told him he had to use that one and then immediately throw it away. I told him I appreciated that he had thought of me when he brought the thing home.

But then we got outside, and he tried to smell pollute our neighbors. And then he smell polluted me. Durian reeks just as bad as every judge, contestant, and host of Chopped says it does.

I thought it looked like a jackfruit at first, but as he was cutting it, he said it was poky and hurting his hands. The exterior is spiky, razor sharp, and I’m surprised he didn’t bleed from holding it.

The flesh was different than I thought it would be too. Once you cut into it, you find this milky, squishy stuff, and that’s the part you eat. That is also the part that smells the worst and the strongest.

I made him eat it first in front of me. He looked me dead in the eyes, like he was trying to prove that it wasn’t that bad. I scooped a small piece off his finger as mosquitos bit the shit out of my ankles and arms.

He was right, it does taste like it smells. My gag reflex kicked in, I made a face, said sorry, and spit it out onto the grass we share with like a hundred other people. He took another handful.

I asked him how much it had cost, and he told me: too much.

I said: what do you mean too much?

He said: It was like 8 dollars a pound.

Me: oh my god, how many pounds was it?

Him: like 5.

Me: You spent 40 dollars on this??? Did you at least split it with your brother?

Him: He just bought it.

    I don’t know why, but I took another bite. He just looked like a little kid, who thought he was doing something nice, when really he was torturing me. This time I swallowed, but that didn’t stop my gag reflex. And it turns out the taste lingers like the smell does, so for the next hour I was burping up the taste of spoiled milk and fetid garbage.

    When I got inside, my glass of water was empty, and there were little pieces of the smell on the paper towel I was holding. I panicked and then washed it in the kitchen sink with Ajax before throwing it away.